Slam Championship Sunday at Java Monkey

   On nice-weather Sunday evenings, much like last Sunday, folks strolling on Church Street find themselves stopping alongside the patio in downtown Decatur.

    What’s this? They seem to ask themselves or their companions.  What’s goin’ on? Hey — something’s going on here!

    Something for sure. Java Monkey Speaks, the regular Sunday night opportunity for poetry performance at the hip wine and coffee bistro, has been going strong for 10 years now, thanks to the efforts of Decatur’s Kodac Harrison, singer-songwriter, guitarist, poet and spoken word artist.

    “It really is a meeting of the tribe, almost like a communion you don’t want to miss out on,” said Rupert Fike, a prominent Atlanta poet and spoken word artist who has stepped onto the Java Monkey stage on many Sundays over the years. “But it’s a tribe that welcomes new members all the time. And it’s a cross-pollinator, with everyone from street kids to little old ladies to the Ph.D from Spelman.”

    Fike, who lives in Clarkston, believes his longtime participation at Java Monkey has made him “a much more forceful and engaging performer.”

    “What I really appreciate is that it’s such a supportive and respectful place for poets. Kodac keeps it a very fair, democratic process. You don’t always find that at other places,” he said. And you can’t beat the price: free.

   At last Sunday night’s open mic event, Fike entertained the attentive crowd of about 80 with a “slam” piece of his titled “The Saddest-Baby-Ever Cries While Mother Bails Out Daddy.” (“Slam” poetry is performed rather than simply read or spoken). Here’s just a snippet from within Fike’s “Saddest-Baby-Ever”:

. . . But wait, now the Saddest-Baby-Ever has stopped crying

because the Youngest-Mother-In-the-World has pulled a miracle

from her pocketbook — it's the longest fattest Chee-to in the Universe,

the Saddest-Baby-Ever reaching for it,

seeing it as good the way Yahweh saw that what he had done

was good after each of those arduous days of creation . . .

    You better come early this Sunday night for Java Monkey’s annual championship slam, because the action starting at 8 p.m. is going to be hot and the talent-hefty. Thirteen finalists who earned top scores in the venue’s slam contests (second Sunday of the month between September and March), will compete to determine who among them earns a slot on Java Monkey’s team going to the 2011 National Poetry Slam. The five slam poets with the highest scores awarded by judges chosen from the audience will have several months to rehearse as a team and prepare for the nationals in August in Cambridge, Mass.

    Theresa Davis is among the slam artists to qualify for the Sunday night championship. She’s also one of Atlanta’s best-known slam poets and has performed all over the country. Davis, who by day is a middle school teacher at Decatur’s Horizon School, ranked “eighth best female poet in the world” at the 2008 Women of the World Poetry Slam. Just last month, that ranking shot up to No. 1 when she became the grand champ in that same competition in Columbus, Ohio. To win the title, Davis performed “Why I Do This,” a piece she wrote in honor of her late father. (Watch it on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbCTK8cCmBQ).

  “In one of my father’s last conversations with me,” Davis recalled, “he was telling me that I wasn’t living up to my potential. He asked me about my goals and my motivation. He was concerned because I wasn’t writing and performing, and he knew and I knew that I needed to be doing that.”

     A week after that conversation, her father had a stroke and it fell to Davis to be the one to decide to take him off life support.

    Davis is known as a gutsy performance poet. “I suppose I’m just not afraid to say the things that lots of people think but are afraid to say,” she said.

   Much of her work is politically driven or comments on our life and times. She might write an anti-bullying poem, for example. More recently, she created “Spit and Polish,” and tried it out on the Java Monkey audience. The subject matter: a certain actor and “his pornographic love affair with America and how America kind of loves to love the bad boy and so we build them up and then we want to watch the train wreck.” Some of the action and language in her performance of “Spit and Polish” carries an X rating, but here’s just the opening, courtesy of Davis:

When we first met you Carlos Esteves

You were rough cut bad boy swagger

Emilio danced in your shadow

And we forgave your expulsion from school

Because you were handsome

And Hollywood carved stars in your eyes

And by the time your transgressions came to call on you

You had changed your name to Charlie

The sheen more shine more shimmer

But you never lost your taste for porn stars . . .

   Davis, said host Kodac Harrison, “could read the back of a cereal box and make it sound great, but in her writing she finds the heart of the matter.” He added that he has watched both Davis and Bryan Patillo, also of Decatur, really grow over the years as performers. Patillo has won a spot on every team Java Monkey has sent to the national slam in recent years; he is again among the finalists competing Sunday.

    Parrish Bush, 22, who studies communications at Georgia Perimeter College, hopes to get to the big time one day. Last Sunday, he was what Harrison called “one of our virgins,” or poets getting up on the Java Monkey stage for the first time. Finding a nice rhythm and pace early, Bush performed his piece, “She Tries to Go For Bad.” Its inspiration? “I was talking to my grandmother, who told me that her sister would ‘try to go for bad,’ which meant she would cuss, join the wrong crowd, be putting on an attitude,” Bush said. “Well, that reminded me of this girl I used to date.  . . .”  Here’s just the beginning:

She tries to go,

She tries to go for bad.

Pitchin’ hissy fits, lately talking Shhhh, balling out of control,

High chair too high, wanna be grown, picking up worldly ways,

Try-na bring them back home . . .

She tries to go,

She tries to go for bad.

Ignoring neighbors, approaching strangers . . .

  “We love all our first-timers,” Harrison cried out when kicking off last Sunday’s open mic event. “We feed off of our virgins! I know that sounds wicked, but it’s true!”

   This Sunday offers no virgin poets, but rather many of the best slam artists in this land. Daryl Funn, whose spoken artist name is MistaFunn, is among the 13 vying for a slot on the championship team. Whether or not he earns a slot on the team, he’ll still go to nationals because he is also serving as the “slam master” who will oversee the 2011 Java Monkey team.

   “Sunday night will be a kaleidoscope of awesome,” said Funn. “You do not want to miss it.”

    Slam champ Theresa Davis has offered to go up on stage first. Her performance will set the bar for the Olympics-style point system judging of the slam finalists who will perform in three rounds.

    “Every competition needs a sacrificial poet,” Davis said. “A slam cannot be performed unless there is poet blood on the stage.”

Java Monkey Speaks Poetry Slam Finals: 8 p.m. Sunday at Java Monkey, 425 Church St., Decatur, 30030. Free. www.javamonkeyslam.com, www.javamonkeydecatur.com.  After this weekend, open mic for poets of all skill levels continues at 8 p.m. every Sunday, with signup to perform at 7:30 p.m. (Slam competition is seasonal: the second Sunday of every month, September through March). 404-378-5002.